Reflect some of the ways that you want to assess your students, i.e. monitor their level of understanding what you're teaching.
The main way I gauge whether students understand is by watching their reactions as I teach. This only took me about 6 periods of teaching to figure out. When students understand its very apparent. I find that if I am ever in doubt of whether or not they understand I assume they don't, and attack the concept from a different angle. I have also found that my students are very vocal about when they are confused as well as when they understand. They are not affraid to say, "I don't get it," or "Oh! I get this." Between the verbal and body language cues I can tell pretty well if they understand. I would like to start having students fill out an exit slip in the last few minutes in class so I have a concrete example of their understanding. I have planned this for a few classes, but I need to work on my clock management to pull it off successfully. I often end up having to begin the class with and admit slip but I would rather have the time after class to look over thier responces than durring.
Describe your grading policy, i.e. how you will assign scores to represent performance. Explain why you are choosing to use this method. If you are continuing your CT's grading policy, explain what you feel are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.
I have adopted my CT's grading policy. While it is not my ideal choice I know that I will be using a grading policy that I would be more apt to use in a classroom of my own when I switch schools. The benefit of this is that I can get some exposure to 2 grading strategies, which will give me the opportunity to compare the two. Also, this is the grading policy the students are used to and it seams to be working well for them. MY CT grades homework, classwork, labs and test for 20-30% of student grades. I like the fact that each category is weighted almost equally, so students who strugle with tests can easily make up for it with effort in other areas. However, after seminar last week, I can see why divying up percentage points for different categories of work can be confusing for students.
When I switch schools, I will be working with a running point total to calculate student grades. I like this system better becuase students know what thier grade is at every point in the quarter. Students are given a table to organize thier grades. The table has 4 columns: one for thier score on an assesment, one for the total points possible, one for thier total points earned to date, and one for total points possible to date. Students can easily calculate how they did on an individual assesment as well as calculate thier class average. This allows students to track thier progress over a quarter and see the impact a good or bad grade can make. I think the a back of this system is that, when a student with a low average does well on an assesment late in the quarter, they might find that their good grade has little effect on thier average at this point. This might discourage them from putting the effort in on future assesments.
The main way I gauge whether students understand is by watching their reactions as I teach. This only took me about 6 periods of teaching to figure out. When students understand its very apparent. I find that if I am ever in doubt of whether or not they understand I assume they don't, and attack the concept from a different angle. I have also found that my students are very vocal about when they are confused as well as when they understand. They are not affraid to say, "I don't get it," or "Oh! I get this." Between the verbal and body language cues I can tell pretty well if they understand. I would like to start having students fill out an exit slip in the last few minutes in class so I have a concrete example of their understanding. I have planned this for a few classes, but I need to work on my clock management to pull it off successfully. I often end up having to begin the class with and admit slip but I would rather have the time after class to look over thier responces than durring.Reflect some of the ways that you want to assess your students, i.e. monitor their level of understanding what you're teaching.
Describe your grading policy, i.e. how you will assign scores to represent performance. Explain why you are choosing to use this method. If you are continuing your CT's grading policy, explain what you feel are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.
I have adopted my CT's grading policy. While it is not my ideal choice I know that I will be using a grading policy that I would be more apt to use in a classroom of my own when I switch schools. The benefit of this is that I can get some exposure to 2 grading strategies, which will give me the opportunity to compare the two. Also, this is the grading policy the students are used to and it seams to be working well for them. MY CT grades homework, classwork, labs and test for 20-30% of student grades. I like the fact that each category is weighted almost equally, so students who strugle with tests can easily make up for it with effort in other areas. However, after seminar last week, I can see why divying up percentage points for different categories of work can be confusing for students.
When I switch schools, I will be working with a running point total to calculate student grades. I like this system better becuase students know what thier grade is at every point in the quarter. Students are given a table to organize thier grades. The table has 4 columns: one for thier score on an assesment, one for the total points possible, one for thier total points earned to date, and one for total points possible to date. Students can easily calculate how they did on an individual assesment as well as calculate thier class average. This allows students to track thier progress over a quarter and see the impact a good or bad grade can make. I think the a back of this system is that, when a student with a low average does well on an assesment late in the quarter, they might find that their good grade has little effect on thier average at this point. This might discourage them from putting the effort in on future assesments.